A's

Daily Madden: Cespedes Impresses At Home Run Derby

Yoenis Cespedes of the Oakland Athletics poses with the trophy after winning Chevrolet Home Run Derby on July 15, 2013 at Citi Field in the Flushing neighborhood of the Queens borough of New York City. (Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images)

“He was great,” John Madden told the KCBS Radio morning crew. “The thing that was cool about it was the other players were interested in watching him… Even when the Red Sox were in town a week ago, they would come out just to watch him take batting practice. That goes back to the days of McGwire and Canseco, where you used to get to the A’s games early to watch batting practice. Those guys would hit back to back in batting practice and other players would come out and watch them. Cespedes has that.”

Madden was also impressed with some of the pitchers for the Home Run Derby.

“What I thought was real cool was a couple guys had their dads pitch to them,” Madden said. “It’s pretty cool when you’re that age and your dad can still pitch batting practice and throw it like that, because that’s a real skill too… When you watch that and you kind of think back to how many years they’ve been doing that — that’s probably the reason that guy’s there.” (7:30)